Longboarding at Mac

Ben Verkerk

The Silhouette

As Canadians, a mild winter comes as a bittersweet circumstance for most. On one side, the roads are safe, accidents are down and CAA members can rest easy knowing their 100km of free towing is still available to them. On the flip side, sledding on cafeteria trays at faculty hollow, skating on Cootes, and making snowmen are at a low. Even the traditional phallic sculpture outside JHE has been cut short.

The disappearance of snow at McMaster has also seen the dissolution of the Ski and Snowboard Club, leaving an unmet demand by thrill-seekers. Fortunately, some ragtag skate punks have come together to form a club in an up-and-coming adrenalin junky pass-time.

Longboarders have been sweeping through campus for several years now, getting in trouble from security, weaving around light posts, and getting to class considerably quicker than everyone else. Longboarding, which is an obvious derivation from skateboarding, is a faster, smoother and altogether bigger set-up. The boards aren’t meant to kick-flip; rather, they’re for carving, cruising, sliding and primarily racing down hills.

All these areas have their own following but downhill is by and away the most exciting. An inch of wood, four hunks of poly-urethane (the wheels) and some metal trucks (like the axle on a Red Flyer Wagon) are all that’s keeping a racer from barrelling into a curb, light post or worse when travelling at speeds of up to and beyond 100km/h.

Needless to say, McMaster’s campus isn’t quite outfitted for these sorts of speeds, so the freestyle divisions, carving cruising and sliding, are more prevalent. The technicalities I won’t get into, but words like “dancing,” “shuvit” and “standee” are a bit more conducive to the Westdale/McMaster environment.

So what’s the deal? Why do people get into this sport? It seems most people start out wanting to commute – to get to class from the far end of Emerson faster than the busses can do it, without having to worry about a bike to lock up. Sure, biking is a bit quicker, and you get to sit down while doing it. But by the time cyclists have locked up their bike, thrown a plastic bag over their seat in case of rain, and marched from the seemingly randomly placed campus bike racks, I’m already in class schmoozing with a cute girl about the dangerous lifestyle I lead as a longboarding racer.

To say the longboarding club will be revolutionizing how students get to class is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is prepared to offer lessons on skating, techniques and even on board maintenance. They all seem to have a collection of boards in a variety of styles, and no one hesitates to lend a board to a new rider.